Dell OEM 2070 Super cooler swap?

Octopus · October 23, 2021

Howdy folks

I have a 2070 Super that Dell made (I think the actual card is assembled by MSI, but there's no branding other than the obligatory RTX branding) and the cooling solution is, frankly, terrible. It thermal throttles constantly. I'd like to swap the cooler to a better one (unfortunately I can't go water due to case space). Are 2070S pcb's mostly standard in terms of layout and screw holes? Are there any good aftermarket coolers? I'd prefer a blower-style or partial blower-style as my case has basically no airflow from fans (see details below), but honestly, anything that would let me get the full stock performance out of my card and keep it alive would be enough.

some relevant information: I got the card in an XPS Special Edition desktop with a 10700k and 2070S. (Don't buy this PC I beg you) I replaced the OEM 80mm case fan with a 92mm Noctua NF-A9 and the OEM tower cooler with a Noctua NH-D9L. This keeps my cpu from thermal throttling, barely. It's a negative pressure setup, one 92mm fan in the top rear, passive intake in the bottom front, no mounting or space to mount any other case fans. I have no control over the fan curves because Dell hates people and locked down their BIOS and fan curves.

The GPU throttles constantly and doesn't even run at base clock speeds. Under full load it'll run at 84-85c on the core with the memory chips sitting in the 100-105c range. It's a blower-style card, similar to a MSI blower card, but doesn't have any branding other than the RTX branding. The fin stack is aluminum and quite small. The shroud and stack are supported by a black anodized aluminum frame that contacts all the front side thermal pads. The back is bare with no backplate or cooling of any kind, not that there are any chips on the back anyway, but still. I can control the fan via afterburner, but even at full Jet Engine speeds (makes my whole setup shake from the vibration) thermals are in the upper 70's on the core and upper 90's on the memory. At those fan speeds it is unusable due to noise and vibration. In terms of maintenance: I recently took it apart to clean and repaste. There wasn't any dust buildup (good) but the paste was hard. I didn't replace any thermal pads, though I probably should, but I honestly think it wouldn't make any difference in thermals because the fan is just overwhelmed.

It may be I just have to wait until I have enough money to buy a non-proprietary mobo and PSU and swap everything to a case I can run a loop through, but I'd like to not stress the poor thing out any longer than I have to since it's basically impossible to get a GPU now. Any advice would be appreciated and I can post some pics of the case/card if those would be helpful.